Okay, this is going to get long
Yes, about right now
Okay, this is going to get long (and is spoilered for everyone else's convenience). I didn't want to get drawn into a quote battle, but you're misunderstanding my position so badly, and I feel your position to be wrong on so many levels, that I feel obliged to give it the full treatment here.
Great
Before I respond to your treatment, I at first have to say that this thread was the first time I made an effort to precisely lay out my convictions on the matter of morality and as a consequence I think I did not always do the best job in communicating it. I am sorry for any unnecessary misunderstandings I have caused in the process. Further on, in the progress of the debate I also at times have said things which weren't thought through properly but without me immediately realizing it, so that only made things worse. However, that is not supposed to convey that I think my conviction is a product of ill reasoning in principle, rather I think I made mistakes in presenting and applying this principle. But I shall try to make up for it. You raised valid points, and I shall address them.
Also, to explain my accusation of you having to be an idealist:
I am sure you don't want to claim that morality was merely whatever social dynamics say it is (like having a bunch of Anti-Semites and accept their morale stance that Jews should be exterminated - yes I just Godwined you
). Hence, you will want to establish values which don't depend on whatever someone chooses to view morale. And if you don't accept my approach, only idealism is left to do so. That is why I accused you of idealism, even if you don't realize it that you are using it. But I didn't account for the possibility that you simply don't dare to assume any ultimate source of morality. That was my mistake (and I used to think the same).
Now while I argue some points you raised, at the same time I ask you take again a look at the basic reasoning of my argument and tell me where exactly you disagree.
What is morality? Most generally - a notion of what is good and bad.
But what gives birth to such a notion? Can a stone be good? A molecule? Are physics good or bad? Does natural law judge?
No matter how hard we look, we find no material "good" or "bad". We find neurons and chemical process that may cause you or me to see something as good or bad. But they are just that: Neurons and chemical processes. In deed, the only realm where we find "good" or "bad" is the subjective realm of our minds. They are ideas after all. They don't exist, they are only imagined to do so. An ant may behave in a way we judge as good or moral, but the ant itself has no such concept, it just exists. Just like a stone isn't moral in helping a mountain to stand and electrons don't travel because they feel it to be their duty. Those are all entirely subjective, human concepts.
But what does it even mean to have a subjective POV? It means to experience. To not only interact with the exterior - like an ant or a stone or a tree - but to have a immaterial interior. Such a thing may only be an abstraction, or just a product of our limited understanding, but is somehow there. What now means is, that experience is the only criteria of value by definition. As anything beyond the realm of this subjective experience is void of value to begin with.
Now, lets assume a human which is completely void of feelings. This person does neither like or dislike anything. A state of absolute emotional apathy. If this person is hungry, will it be bothered by it and eat? If this person is hit, will it feel threatened by it and defend itself or seek to get away? If it can't feel, will it care, for anything? If it does not care at all, how is this person supposed to want something? How is it supposed to be motivated? To value?
How is it supposed to judge?
I think what this intuitively demonstrates is, that to judge does not just require a subjective experience. It requires someone to value things. And that requires emotions.
So
in the realm of our subjective experience emotions are the source of value, of judgment and hence of morality. The limitation to this realm is not a problem here, because remember that outside of this realm, in the material world, there is no value to begin with. So if you seek to understand value, you need to orientate on our subjective experience. For
how to influence and understand our subjective experience, the material world matters a lot. You named it: Nero-science, but also mere biology. And for our lack of the ability to exactly measure the emotional world of a being and to determine all its causes and properties, but also because our emotional world interacts with thoughts we have, science like psychology and anthropology surely are useful. At last, to pick up the term you proposed, just as the material world objectively determines motivation, you are right that not everything that drives us is emotional. But within our subjective experience - it is. A psychologist my find brilliant ways to describe our psychs and a Nero-science-professor may be able to highlight very crucial not emotional factors that drive us. But neither the professor nor the psychologist experience them. They only experience feelings and thought and the endlessly complicated conglomerates they form. And morality being about value and value being ultimately being about emotions and emotions being purely subjective in their existence (your neurons don't feel, nor do any biological transmitters) - our tries to explain emotions, motivation, drives whatever have
in themselves no relevance for the question
"What is good?",
Our subjective experience and as (hopefully) demonstrated emotions is the deciding factor, and in deed the only one. And in action that means, emotional urges and their satisfaction.
I call the result of such satisfaction pleasure. You are right that my terminology is no accident. I labeled the satisfaction of those urges "pleasure" because I looked for an objective criteria to define pleasure (albeit it is a fuzzy definition, but at least objective). Exactly because it is so loaded, so as to give an objective angle regarding what humans really desire in contrast to what one may intuitively assume pleasure to be. This distinction of common assumptions and actuality is in essence all my approach is about as you have noticed. To replace an intuitive understanding of morality with an objective one (just that "objective" isn't supposed to mean a disregard for all subjective elements but rather an objective analysis of their fundamental role). And that is also why I compared it to physics. To demonstrate that an intuitive angle will likely produce arbitrary assumptions about what is good and bad. And that it is hence desirable to stop and ask "Wait, where does a notion of good or bad originate to begin with?" Which is: Emotions and in action the satisfaction of emotional urges.
You may find this presumptuous and ill-advised. But then I ask you to follow my reasoning and tell me where exactly I made an undue assumption or conclusion. Because honestly, I don't see it. All the points of your last post seemed to come down to misunderstandings / myself not making it perfectly clear what I mean (most notably the emphasize on the subjective realm). But I am confident this is will not sway our argument this time. Though perhaps maybe also I again misunderstood you. But before you respond, read my last paragraph:
What then is left is simply the choice - a external factor as you say - to apply this concept of morality as a tool to satisfy emotional urges solely on the individual (which wouldn't seem very morale at all) OR on the collective (making morality a tool to organize/motivate society for the common good).
Now you may argue that the decision what to choose has it own arbitrariness. That I could not comprehensively justify the collective approach without stipulating a more or less arbitrary assumption about what morality is supposed to do myself. Or as you put it that it was an "external" factor. That seems plausible. On first sight.
On second sight, I would like to suggest that the collective approach will in the end also serve the individual the best, just not in every instance. So someone may loose for it, but many will win. However, I would further suggest that this can only work if the whole of individuals join the collective approach and that further on by the collective pressure of the many, the individual that may loose will in effect loose even more when not joining the collective approach.
Meaning, that IMO the collective approach is - by a rather long chain of reasoning - the logical conclusion of the individual approach. Just that it requires cooperation to work (and hence isn't the safest, but the most ideal bet).
However, I admit that this is a little convoluted. So maybe I am just desperately trying here to avoid to admit that in the end I also have make a more or less arbitrary assumption. Am not certain yet.
Soooo... thoughts?
Also at last a finale remark on something you said. It doesn't matter for my argument as such, but was about my motivation to make this argument.
Here we arrive at the crux of the whole matter. You think people are idiots who need to be told what's good because they lack sufficient intelligence to work it out for themselves. The inevitable concomitant of this is that there are some people who are not idiots, and thus should be allowed to decide what's good for everybody (i.e. our enlightened dictators). And who might those people be? Well, obviously, they are the people who agree with your conception of what constitutes the good.
I only meant to demonstrate how morality can reasonably be argued to have an objective angle, and IMO just as everything the concept of morality will also benefit from an objective angle. Otherwise you basically invite people to project all kinds of half-backed assumptions into it, for all kinds of reasons except to actually serve what IMO objectively is good (satisfaction of emotional urges).
What I think or don't think about the intelligence of my fellow humans is another matter. But I freely admit, that IMO most people don't give a flying frack about a sensible concept of morality but just go by what you like to emphasize. The practical originations of morality. But I don't think that they are too stupid to do otherwise. I think they simply had no one who taught them otherwise, I think they are mere reflections of the way our societies handle morality. Which is in an inconsistent, arbitrary and intuitive way. And best thing is, that even philosophers will do so. So no wonder. But I think, that by doing so, we don't utilize the actual potential the concept of morality has. The potential for the common good it has. But of course, to do so, we first need to establish what morality as a measure of good and bad actually entails in a coherent and rational manner, instead of what people for whatever reasons choose to project into it.
